China's Commitment to Green Energy and Nuclear Shows U.S. Oil's Future
Commodities / Renewable Energy Jan 18, 2010 - 09:12 AM GMTTo their peril, there are two critical points still not comprehended by the majority of foreigners, including investment analysts and other supposed gurus chiming in their opinion on China.
First, foreigner's just don't get it regarding the insane amounts of CASH CASH CASH which exists inside this country, both at the government and private sector level. I will not go into further detail on this here because it is not the main focus of today's article and it is a subject I frequently focus on. Suffice to say the recent report on massively increasing imports into China should start getting the world to clue in on what's really going on domestically here in China.
Secondly, and our focus for this article, foreigners should be deeply envious of China's "green" revolution; a commitment with a magnitude far greater than any other country in the world with respect to solar, wind, and nuclear energy sources for the future. Remarkable!
In demonstrating this commitment, they are also sending an amazing message on the future of energy in our world.
We won't need much oil. Here are the three reasons why, with the third being the big surprise.
First, China's commitment to solar energy is massive. From a recent article by Thomas Friedman, "Bill Gross, who runs eSolar, a promising California solar-thermal start-up: On Saturday, in Beijing, said Gross, he announced “the biggest solar-thermal deal ever. It’s a 2 gigawatt, $5 billion deal to build plants in China using our California-based technology. China is being even more aggressive than the U.S. We applied for a [U.S. Department of Energy] loan for a 92 megawatt project in New Mexico, and in less time than it took them to do stage 1 of the application review, China signs, approves, and is ready to begin construction this year on a 20 times bigger project!”
Second, the situation is much the same regarding China's commitment to wind power energy. Blessed by the strong desert winds in Gansu Province, they are building numerous mega-sized wind farms totaling 20 megawatts of output by 2020, and at a third of the costs in the West. According to the Global Wind Energy Council, China has doubled its wind power capacity every year for the past five.
Third, China Goes Nuclear. Locally here in tropical Sanya, Hainan Island, China I recently met a German who was a project manager in the nuclear industry here in China. He told me they were working on the planning project to build 21 more nuclear power plants in the coming decade. The recent article by Friedman states China plans to build over 50 nuclear power plants by 2020.
In the U.S., big business oil and other special interest groups prevent nuclear from being a viable option on U.S. soil. France has plenty of nuclear power and so does England. According to Dave Forest at Pierce Points, Japan's Tokyo Electric Power (Asia's largest utility company) reported a significant decrease in oil demand due to their bringing back on-line its Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear complex, damaged by an earthquake last year. But what China has planned is truly a whole new level for the alternative energy industry.
With China leading the way on an unexpected and unprecedented scale, the day will come when we sarcastically wonder: Who needs oil?
The following ETF funds are in the nuclear and clean energy sectors. Good luck.
Market Vectors Nuclear Energy ETF (NLR)
PowerShares Global Nuclear Portfolio (PKN)
iShares S&P Global Nuclear Energy Index Fund (NUCL)
PowerShares Global Clean Energy Portfolio (PBD)
Claymore/MAC Golbal Solar Energy ETF (TAN)
By Mario Cavolo
Disclosure; author has position in SCO 2x inverse oil fund.
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